A serious documentary film about Oskar Schindler would explore not only his courageous action—saving more than 1100 Jews in Nazi Germany—but also his war profiteering and his numerous extramarital affairs. So, too, a rigorous investigation of Thomas Jefferson would include an examination of his ownership of slaves and his likely fathering of children with Sally Hemings, just as a serious biography of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. would not declare somehow out of bounds their numerous extramarital affairs. The goal can't be to burnish a myth, but rather to understand the subject, to connect human strengths with human weaknesses. No one is beyond reasonable inspection. No one is above reproach. No one gets a special pass or special exemption. To pretend otherwise is to reduce history and biography to hagiography.

Surely, a different biographical standard doesn't apply to J.D. Salinger any more than it applies to Oskar Schindler, Thomas Jefferson, or Martin Luther King Jr. Anything less than painstaking scrutiny is to contribute mightily to cultural amnesia, to the airbrushing of history, to participation in star-making machinery, to a child-like need to believe in a "transcendental signifier," a purity myth of the true, the beautiful, the uncorrupted.

The documentary film Salinger, which I directed, had a very successful first weekend at the box office, scoring the highest per screen average. The oral biography Salinger, which I co-wrote with David Shields, has received a number of very positive reviews and debuted at number six on The New York Times bestseller list and number three on the independent bookseller list.

However, there have been several reviews of the film that have said, more or less, "Leave Salinger alone. He wrote beautiful books. That's all we ever want to know about him." And yet I am, in a way, making a very Salingeresque gesture: reading past the phony façade to the core actuality underneath: my goal is not to "bring Salinger down" but to show the horrific springs of art and the endless cost of war.

I pay Salinger the ultimate compliment of treating him as a complex, contradictory human being, which is what made his writing so good in the first place, because it's informed by massive agony and anxiety, that is, human frailty. He wasn't a god. He was just a man. That's the point.

Salinger writes almost exclusively about damaged people. Are we really willing to pretend that the author of such profound examinations of damage was somehow either undamaged himself, or if damaged, such damage isn't fair game? Why? Because Salinger declared himself a recluse and therefore this stance must be obeyed as if by cultural fiat? J.D. Salinger was not a recluse. He conducted a one-way dialogue with the world, communicating when he wanted or needed to with journalists, traveling extensively, maintaining lifelong friendships and correspondences, conducting numerous love affairs, but throwing up a cordon sanitaire around himself whenever he wanted no intrusions.

A cultural icon doesn't get to choose when he is or isn't a public figure. Is he a public figure when he publishes a book or phones a reporter for the New York Times or pursues underage girls or aggressively pursues Hollywood actresses he sees on television but at all other times is a person whose "privacy" is quaintly respected? If so, why? What cultural myth about isolated male genius is thus being perpetuated?

No one has disputed a single finding in the film or book, both of which have been praised for the rigor of their research, but it's as if the culture—the Salinger industry, still wildly invested in the fairy tale of Salinger the adored writer of Catcher, Salinger the remote bard of Cornish—doesn't approve of the fact that I've found difficult and disturbing revelations about its idol. As any serious documentary filmmaker seeks to do, I have tried to empty out the prevailing myth. To the degree that some critics are upset, they blame the messenger. Better, I think, to heed the complex message.

My documentary film attempts to do what all good biographical investigation attempts to do, which is to produce a full, balanced, rigorous, and tough-minded portrait of its subject, and in so doing, get at hard truths. The film shows how Salinger connected to all of us only by disconnecting from the world, thereby revealing our complex, flawed humanity.

Although some critics apparently prefer a naïve fantasy—the myth of a Christ-like figure who was a uniquely pure and perfect individual—I invite them instead to confront the very difficult nature of serious artistic creation. The film and the book are over-whelmingly about pain and about the incredibly delicate balance between art and sorrowful life. It's an almost impossible balancing act, and for nearly a decade Salinger managed it miraculously.

I show the massive amount of suffering that briefly fueled the art and then shortly afterward wound up largely destroying the art and the man. By understanding the profound despair from which Salinger's art emerged, the viewer and the reader will do nothing but dramatically deepen their understanding, appreciation and joy in Salinger's work.

As a direct result of the film and book's success, Salinger's work has again shot to the top of the bestseller lists. Far from having harmed an author whom we respect and admire, we're honored to have brought him to a new generation of readers. Nevertheless, some critics have asserted that I shouldn't have explored several key elements of Salinger's life and work.

My film is the first work to open the door to the dark soul of J.D. Salinger and, as such, isn't harmless; it empties out a myth, and it gets people upset, which is what a good documentary film is supposed to do. People are arguing about my film, because there's something to argue about. The film opens nationwide this weekend. I hope you will see it and judge for yourself.